In the processing of poultry carcasses in the past, removing the wings from the carcasses at the carcass shoulder joints and cutting the wings at the joints between the drumette, mid-wing, and wing tip sections to produce separate poultry wing segments was a labor intensive operation. Typically, the wings were manually removed from the carcass and after removal were manually cut into segments. With the growing consumer demand for segmented chicken wings, it became desirable to automate the processing of poultry wings.
Automation of the poultry wing cut up process was accomplished to some extent by the cutting and separating of the whole wings from the carcasses while the poultry carcasses were suspended from the main overhead conveyor system of a poultry processing plant, an example of which is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,136 of Hazenbroek. After the whole wings were removed, they were manually placed in a wing dissector such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,207,653 of Gasbarro and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,577,368 of Hazenbroek, which divides or separates each of the wings into its three segments. However, this procedure requires the manual steps of placing each wing in the wing dissector. Other wing cut up procedures are suggested by U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,624 of Martin and U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,872 of Hazenbroek; however, in these devices the poultry carcass must be manually mounted on the cut up machine. Such a transfer operation is time consuming, labor intensive, and increases the risk of operator injury.
Thus, a need exists in the art for a method and apparatus for accurately severing the mid-wing segments from the drumette segments of the wings of poultry carcasses while the carcasses are being conveyed by an overhead conveyor system.